One of this season’s blessings is that there aren’t nearly as many what-ifs associated with it as a year ago, when the pandemic wiped out the final seven weeks of the regular season, plus the NCAA tournament.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t things to wonder about. Just how the Ivy League’s teams would have fared is something we’ll never know; Penn’s return to action on Friday at Division III Cabrini aside.

For the purposes of projecting an NCAA tournament bracket, it would be great to know how Maryland would have done against non-Big Ten competition. The Terrapins are 9-0 after Sunday’s 18-8 pummeling of Ohio State and have outscored their largely overmatched conference foes by an average of 7.44 goals a game. They have yet to trail in the second half in any game.

No one should argue about whether Maryland is good. Jared Bernhardt has made an impressive push for the Tewaaraton, and the Terps’ attack (with Logan Wisnauskas and Daniel Maltz enjoying stellar seasons) is ferocious. The defense has done its part, too, with Nick Grill among the nation’s top cover men.

But it sure would help in assessing Maryland if it played North Carolina like it normally does, Notre Dame as it often does and Virginia as it was supposed to a year ago before the season was canceled. With only one other Big Ten team above .500 (Rutgers) and no comparison for the conference’s teams to the rest of Division I, there isn’t a way to make an apples-to-apples comparison.

How the NCAA lacrosse committee evaluates Maryland (and Rutgers, too) is going to be one of the juicy Selection Sunday subplots. By the typical numbers, it’s plausible the Terps would be a No. 5 seed if the tournament began now. The guess here is an unbeaten Maryland would be treated better than the NCAA’s traditional metrics would imply, but not as well as it is by human polls irrelevant to the seeding process.

But that’s an unknown — and they are still far more plentiful than what-ifs when it comes to sizing up this year’s tournament.

Automatic Qualifiers (8)

Wherever you come down on how to evaluate Maryland at this point, one thing is indisputable: Its profile won’t gain much with a victory at 2-7 Johns Hopkins, but a loss would be quite damaging. … Georgetown has something tangible to point to after beating Denver in overtime. The Hoyas hold a half-game lead on the Pioneers in the Big East standings. …

Those two top-20 games for Monmouth? A 1-1 split with fellow Metro Atlantic member Manhattan (No. 20 in the RPI). … Lehigh fell from No. 6 to No. 13 in the RPI after beating winless Lafayette twice in three days. That’s not a pandemic quirk; that’s the RPI in action. …

Delaware has more top-20 victories than anyone outside the ACC. Only Duke, Virginia and North Carolina have more. … Richmond didn’t beat any of its three ACC opponents, but its early defeat of Towson now stands as its most valuable victory. …

Saint Joseph’s can lock up the Northeast Conference regular-season title with a victory over Long Island on Hawk Hill this weekend. … No one in the America East has an RPI better than 23rd, which makes it tough for anyone (Stony Brook, included) to get any traction.

At-Large (19 teams/8 slots)

In a normal year, a team with the top RPI that also has the most top-five wins, top-10 wins and top-20 wins is going to be the No. 1 seed. That’s reflected below for Duke. … Army probably isn’t going to be a top-two seed, in part because (for the moment, anyway) Syracuse isn’t going to be treated like a top-five seed. The Black Knights’ victory at the Carrier Dome in February has decreased in value this month. …

North Carolina might not be the best team in the country on its typical day. But the best version of the Tar Heels — seen against Denver, the second time around against High Point and at Syracuse — is an impressive juggernaut. … Virginia gets into the barn this weekend. A top-four seed is probably waiting if the Cavaliers can beat Syracuse. …

Speaking of the Orange, Syracuse has lost three games at home by at least seven goals. In a year when hard data might take on less of a role, the Orange’s anyone-can-see-it vulnerability is going to get factored in. … Notre Dame’s low RPI is in part a function of a modest non-conference schedule. Facing Duke and North Carolina this week will help with that problem. …

Denver might not be as much of a sure-fire at-large as the top four ACC teams, but the Pioneers can solve that problem in three steps: Beating St. John’s, Villanova and whoever they meet in the Big East semifinals. … Thanks to the wonders of the Big Ten’s closed circuit, Rutgers hasn’t beaten anyone with an RPI of better than 33. No team is going to get helped more by regional advisory committee (RAC) input than the Scarlet Knights. …

Drexel has won five in a row and might just be the best of the rest beyond the Elevated Eleven. … Navy is one of the few teams left that could make itself an intriguing at-large possibility. The Midshipmen have an opportunity to do that Saturday when Army visits Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. …

Towson still has home games against Delaware and Drexel. Win both, and the Tigers will be poised to create some havoc in the ever-unpredictable CAA tournament. … You don’t want to stand out in a bad way. Having two items in the “notable losses” column — like Bryant, Albany and Hofstra do — is not ideal. …

Same goes for an absence of high-end victories. Vermont and Villanova have that problem, though ’Nova has a chance to fix that thanks to a rescheduled home game against Denver on April 28. … Loyola also has a valuable meeting with a Big East power still to come (May 1 vs. Georgetown), but the Greyhounds sure look like they’ll need to win the Patriot League to make the field of 16.

BRACKET

With the NCAA’s announcement of the tournament’s first-round sites running behind schedule, the same premises from last week hold up: One northern site, one site south of the Potomac and two sites dropped between Philadelphia and Washington to create geographic flexibility.

The NCAA typically tries to limit the first round to two teams requiring flights. Denver and Notre Dame would have to fly to any East Coast destination, and Saint Joseph’s would if the southern site was Chapel Hill, N.C. (The distance from the Hawks’ campus to Duke fits just inside the NCAA’s 400-mile window to determine flights).

Hempstead, N.Y., quarterfinal

(1) Duke vs. NORTHEAST/Saint Joseph’s                                               Southern site
(8) BIG EAST/Georgetown vs. Rutgers                                                   Mid-Atlantic site

Notre Dame, Ind., quarterfinal

(5) North Carolina vs. COLONIAL/Delaware                                         Southern site
(4) Virginia vs. SOUTHERN/Richmond                                                    Mid-Atlantic site

Notre Dame, Ind., quarterfinal

(3) Notre Dame vs. AMERICA EAST/Stony Brook                                Mid-Atlantic site
(6) PATRIOT/Lehigh vs. Syracuse                                                             Northern site

Hempstead, N.Y., quarterfinal

(7) Army vs. Denver                                                                                    Northern site
(2) BIG TEN/Maryland vs. METRO ATLANTIC/Monmouth                 Mid-Atlantic site